


In the Grey

by esama



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 10:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15071213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: In which Desmond dies, wakes up the the Grey and takes it over.





	In the Grey

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed

So, Desmond died. That kind of sucked.

Not that he hadn't been expecting it. Ever since Abstergo had captured him, he'd figured it was coming pretty soon. Since all those horrible childhood stories were coming true, then that part had to be true too, right – Templars killing Assassins? That's just what happened. Templars got you, they got what they wanted out of you, and then they killed you, the end. In a weird way the whole thing was easier to handle with that acceptance. Less time wasted being worried about his life – if he was bound to die from the get go, he could concentrate onto other things, right, getting what little enjoyment he could get out of what little of his life was left.

Sighing, Desmond leans back and peers upwards, into the white nothingness above.

Getting out of Abstergo had given him some hope, but there was always that weird nagging sensation in the back of his head, that it was all happening on borrowed time. As it was, Lucy's original pitch was to _train him as a better Assassin_ and then _the world is going to end we need the Pieces of Eden_ and then she died and yeah. The idea of oncoming death had never truly passed.

Wonder if that made him suicidal, to be expecting it like that. He hadn't _wanted_ to die, if he could've chosen he would've much preferred to live a long and peaceful and boring life being nobody doing nothing important but… he hadn't really fought against it, either. Maybe he could've run, hide, try and cover in some corner and wait it all down – or fight. He knew how to fight towards the end, maybe he could've used that and done something to try and prolong his life.

How do you fight against the sun though? Yeah he could've walked away from the Grand Temple, the Pedestal and it's weird Eye – could've just not submitted to being the human sacrifice in the altar of ancient gods, but… eh. His life versus billions, versus Shaun and Rebecca and even his asshole of a dad… It wasn't really even a choice. And he was resigned to it. So why cry about it?

So far death hasn't been that bad either. Sure it hurt, but this place isn't Hell so… _win_.

It's kind of boring though.

Straightening his neck and rubbing at the back of it – how can you get a neck ache in death? – Desmond looks around. There's not that much to see, really. The place is just… white and grey mist, mostly, with no distinguishing features whatsoever. Just endless blank space, faintest line separating what might be sky from what might be ground. It kind of reminds him of the Animus load screen really – except even the load screen had more going on than this place. In the load screen there had been flickers of code at least, here there's nothing.

Ah well. Still better than actual fiery pit of Hell. Probably.

Shaking his head, Desmond sets forward, walking at first and then jogging slightly. If there's anything here to see, he won't find it by standing still – and if there's not, then… running is something to do. It always made him feel better on the load screen too – that place had a way of prompting weird sense of existential crisis on him. Something philosophical about nature of things and matter and whether things were real if they were memory encoded into environments by a machine, that sort of fun stuff.

If this is going to be his existence from here on, just being stuck in nothingness, he's going to end up missing that, huh. Along with all the rest. Wonder what Rebecca and Shaun and Dad were doing right about now? Did the Solar Flare get blocked? He thinks it did, but he kind of _died_ while it happened, so, he can't be sure. Wonder if it did any damage.

Imagining world swathed in a global EMP that fries all electronics is how Desmond runs into Clay.

It's recognizably Clay even at a distance – same clothes, same hair, same everything. The guy is lying on the white nothingness of a floor, one leg propped up and the other crossed over it, his arms folded under his neck.

Clay doesn't look at him as Desmond slows his jog into a walk and then stops at his side – he's busy staring at the white sky. Frowning, Desmond glances up – but there's nothing there.

"Hi, Clay," Desmond says warily.

"Let me guess; you're dead," Clay says, not looking at him.

Desmond frowns a little. "Yeah," he agrees and rests a hand at his hip. Is Clay really… _Clay_ or some figment of his imagination? He looks how Desmond remembers – but then, lot of things look like he supposedly remember them to look like and they're not real. "What is this place?"

"Hell. Or purgatory if you want to be fucking poetic about it, but there's no getting out of here, so it's the same damn thing," Clay says, squinting at the sky. "You know, if you stare at it long enough it starts looking like something."

Desmond glances up again – but there's nothing there, just white grey nothingness. "How long have you been here?" he asks slowly.

Clay laughs and suddenly, sits up, leaning his hands back and glaring up at Desmond. "Doesn't fucking matter – time moves at fucking snail's pace here. Could've been hours – feels like decades. How'd you die?"

Desmond shrugs. "Did what the Precursors wanted – activated their Grand Temple. Saved the world from the Solar Flare – I hope. I think it kind of fried me in the process, though," he admits. "So I guess it was a one use thing."

"Pfft," Clay answers, considering him. "Well, there are worse ways to go," he says and then flops back to the white floor, arms splayed out. "I kinda hoped you'd fail," he admits. "Fuck up all their plans, make all of it worth nothing. Wouldn't that be something, all that death and torment and blood, and in the end it's all for nothing? How's that for a _fuck you_?"

"Pretty global," Desmond says and sits down beside him. Clay snorts at him and doesn't answer, and Desmond looks up, at where he's staring again. Nothing there. "So, purgatory, huh?"

"Tch," Clay says and then waves a hand in the air. "It's the buffer zone of the universe. The cache of reality. Trash bin. We're cookies left behind by deleted pages – waiting for someone to wipe the universe's browser history."

"Er," Desmond answers, looking down at him. "Really?"

Clay snorts again. "Fuck if I know," he mutters. "Juno calls it the Grey."

"Juno? She's here?"

Clay makes a face and opens his mouth and then he scowls and snaps it shut. "The fuck?" he mutters and suddenly sits up again, looking around as if searching for something or maybe _smelling_ something, it's kind of weird. And there's nothing but the white grey around them. "The hell, where'd she go?"

Desmond shakes his head, confused. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he admits. "You mean Juno?"

"Yeah, yeah, that bitch," Clay says and suddenly swings to his feet, swift and clumsy and almost falling over. "Shit, she's always _here_ – like, like this fire wall around everything, or a like – you know that feeling when you're under the view of security cameras? That's Juno here – but," he stops and tilts his head. "Huh."

"Ah," Desmond says. "Yeah, that – uh. If she was here and isn't now, then that might've been my doing," he admits and leans back as Clay twists to look at him. "Minerva sort of appeared in the end and told us – Juno was imprisoned in the Grand Temple, it was where they contained her, er, consciousness? I think. Because she was kind of nuts. And using the Temple released her back into the world."

Clay says nothing, staring at him, tilting his head confusedly.

"So, maybe the reason she's not here anymore is because she went back to, you know… the world," Desmond says. "Somehow. Don't ask me how it works, I don't know."

"No, no, no, that's not, hmm," Clay says and then crouches down in front of him, peering at him. "I mean, yeah, I knew about _that,_  but this isn't the Grand Temple – this is the Grey. It's a whole different ball game here, as far as reality goes. If the Grand Temple was a hard drive holding Juno's program, then this place is like the yard outside the room where her hard drive was kept."

"That makes no sense," Desmond tells him.

"Yeah it does, if you think about it," Clay says and peers at his face. "How's your scifi?"

"Er," Desmond answers.

"Alternate dimensions ring any sort of bell?" Clay prompts, arching his brows. "Come on, please tell me you know at least some pop culture."

"I think I've heard about them?" Desmond says. "Like, fourth dimension and whatnot?"

"Yes – but no, forget it. So universe is a book, right? Our three dimensional Earth and all the stuff we can observe from it, that's one spread of pages, right?" Clay says clapping his hands together and then opening them like pages of a book. "Right now, we're on the next spread. Right _next_ to the normal dimensions, but bit off."

"I'll take your word for it," Desmond says slowly. "Don't ask me to understand it."

Clay shrugs. "Anyway, Juno in her little Grand Temple was a thing in good old physical real three dimensional universe and all that. This is _elsewhere_ – and she was _here_ , but she wasn't at the same time. She was watching this place, using it. I figure maybe the Isu learned utilise alternate dimensions like this, like maybe some of their tech used this place, or something. It's like external storage to the normal universe. I think it's how Minerva figured the Calculations and how Juno could jump from temple to temple – they used this place to… cheat physics, basically. Because this place is kind of outside normal time and space."

Desmond sighs and shakes his head. "Again, I'll take you word for it," he says. "Guess she doesn't have use for this place now that she's free?"

"Hmm. I don't think that's it," Clay says and then looks up.

Desmond does the same – and then watches, incredibly confused now, as group of white glad scholars straight from 12th century _Jerusalem_ walk towards them with their heads bent and hands clasped. Clay lets out a snort and one of the scholars mutters, "This is an ill omen," at them, before the whole group turns as one and heads away.

"What?" Desmond asks, staring after them with strangest, most obscure sense of déjà vu. He remembers those guys – he used to hide among them as Altaïr to sneak into closed off cities.

"I think they based Animus on tech that originally used this place, or at least connected to it," Clay answers and shrugs. "Animus cache is emptied here. Most of the stuff just disintegrates into nothing, but the AI keep on roaming around. You know – NPCs."

"Er," Desmond says and stands up, peering after the scholars. With their white robes they're already hard to see against the white background of everything else – soon he can't see them at all. "So there are just random people from the Animus running around here?"

"Yep," Clay says and sits down. "You can actually have conversations with some of them, but they get pretty repetitive. The thieves and whores and Romani are fun to hang around, but it gets weirdly self congratulatory after while."

"The… what?" Desmond asks, wary.

"The NPCs from 15th and 15th century Italy and Ottoman Empire. Courtesans make the majority of them, really, there's at least twice as many of them here than any other groups," Clay says and grins. "I'm blaming you for that – just how many of them did you _patronise_ as Ezio?"

Desmond clears his throat. "It was easier getting around in a group that followed him around, than trying to blend into a random crowd," he mutters defensively. "Also they sang sometimes, it was nice."

"Sure, that's your excuse," Clay snorts and looks him over. Then he shrugs. "Hm. Anyway, there's a whole bunch of NPCs hanging around here. Talking to them is fun at first, but yeah, they're kind of coded to play nice and fawn over you, so it loses its charm pretty fast. Can't have a proper discussion with them, really - it's like talking to bots."

Desmond doesn't know what to say to that – it sounds vaguely sad though. "Is there anything else here?" He asks. "Or is it just us and the people from Animus?"

Clay doesn't answer at first and then he sits back down on the ground. "Yeah, there are others," he says. "But they're range in varying levels of _bad to worse_. I'd rather hang around a Acre merchant trying to sell me nonexistent goods than spend too much around them."

"And by _them_ you mean…" Desmond trails away,

"The other Animus Subjects," Clay says, and gives him a toothily grin. "They're all here – and they're all fucking crazy."

Desmond's eyebrows arch at that. "All of us?" he asks.

"Every single fucking one," Clay says and leans back to lie on the white floor. "Not all of them are around, some of them are just running where fucking ever. Cross came and tried to kill me bunch of times and then went, haven't seen him since – and if you see Vidic, feel free to stab him in the face for me. I got only few hits in before he ran."

" _Vidic_ is here?" Desmond asks, alarmed. "Ands Cross? What the hell?"

"Yeah," Clay laughs, leaning his head back and peering up at the white sky. "Both are Animus Subjects and they all got hooked into this place, somehow, through the damn thing. Vidic's Subject Number 1, so, ranging from him to _you,_  you can pretty much tell how crazy someone is by their number."

Desmond eyes him, wondering. Clay obviously knows him, he sounds like the Clay Desmond met in the Black Room, but… technically that hadn't been the real Clay. There'd been two Clays; one who killed himself and the other who became an AI after his death.

And this one is saying _they_ and not _us_ when talking of Animus Subjects.

"So, what about you?" Desmond asks carefully. "Is there just you, or…"

Clay grins. "Yeah, no such luck," he agrees, his voice low. "The one who does bad finger-painting is here too – and trust me, he's no fun to hang around either."

Desmond swallows, feeling weirdly guilty.

"So yeah, welcome to hell, settle in, because it's going to fucking suck and there's no getting out of here," Clay the AI says. "Though since you like patronising the whores of Italy so much, maybe you'll have grand old time."

Desmond sighs at that and then sits up. "Thanks, I guess," he says and looks around them. It's white all around, with no sense of direction, and nothing marking any way better than the other. Everything is just featureless. "I guess I'll look around some more. Thanks for the… welcome."

"If you go crazy too, keep it to yourself," Clay says, squinting at the white sky. "We all got enough crazy to deal with ourselves without having to worry about you too."

"Alright, I'll… try not to bother anyone," Desmond says and shakes his head. Then he picks a direction and starts walking. "Have a good one, Clay."

"Be seeing you, Desmond."

* * *

 

There are more people in the Grey – more people from the Animus, anyway. The first group Desmond runs are mercenaries from what looks like Rome, judging by their armour, headbands and weaponry. They're standing around as a group of four, one of them cleaning his sword in repetitive motions, all of it weirdly nostalgic.

They don't say anything as he approaches them, though, they just sort of… stand around, occasionally stretching and going through a set of motions and gestures and then looping back to the start of the set of motions – like NPCs in a videogame, running through a sequence.

"Hi," Desmond says to them. "Can you talk to me? Hi, hello, can you, um… can you do anything, guys?" he waves a hand over their face but though they look at him sort of expectantly, they don't say anything. It isn't that they ignore him, it's more like… like they can't hear him at all.

"Well this is a let down," Desmond sighs, tilting his head and examining their faces. They all look slightly different but slightly same. All have the exact same body type, skin texture and so on, with only slight variations on features and clothes and such. Saving on the Animus load costs there, he muses, using the same model with only slight alterations. They all move an gesture the same way, what little gestures they do use. He thinks they did talk in the Animus though. It was always hilarious how they congratulated Ezio on kills which Desmond completely botched up several times before somehow succeeding.

"Do you want to come with me?" Desmond asks. "I don't have any money to hire you with, but I kind of doubt there's anyone here to fight anyway, and you're just standing around here doing nothing – how about little exploration? Might meet some new people?"

Nothing – though they are looking at him now, sort of expectant.

"Come with me," Desmond says, waving a hand – and the four mercenaries shift from their static stances, moving to follow him. Okay then, Desmond thinks, and then turns to continue his way. "So, you guys look like you're from Rome," he says conversationally. "Beautiful place – I think I bought most of it. Whereabouts in Rome did you, uh… live?" Or stand around, perpetually, as it tended to be with these guys.

The mercenaries don't say anything, flexing and waving their weapons like getting ready to get into a brawl, but they follow and they don't seem to mind his chatter terribly, so Desmond keeps chattering to them as they walk through the white nothingness.

"… used the courtesans mostly, sorry about that – it was just handier, to sneak around in a group than get into fights every time I ran into guards. Also it made me feel kind of shitty to always get you guys killed," Desmond says when something runs towards him from the white nothingness and then, soon after, impacts his legs.

It's a kid in dirty clothes, who is already tugging at the hem of Desmond's hoodie pleadingly. Desmond looks down at the kid, astonished, and then there's another running towards him, laughing, "Oh? Oh? Oh?" and laughing harder. He's followed by a third kid, who starts performing some sort of trick, going, "Tadaah!" at the end of it, though Desmond can't actually figure out what he's trying to do and…

Oh. The Orphans of the new world, then. They're pushing at each other to get closer to Desmond, holding out their hands, cupped, begging for coins.

"I – I don't have anything to give you," Desmond says, awkward and uneasy. He remembers trying to get around these kids as Haytham and as Connor, pushing them aside as gentle as he could – and sometimes, not so gentle. They were like the beggar women of Altaïr's time – always felt a bit like the Animus was just fucking with him, including them for no other reason than to annoy him. Them being here is kind of…

"We were told this was the Land of Opportunity," someone speaks and Desmond looks up sharply. There is a woman walking by them in dress of the 18th century, passing them by. "But it seems like the opportunities are…"

"Please, sir," another woman cuts through her, almost literally as she runs out of nowhere and grabs Desmond by the shoulder. This one is wearing a robe and a veil, dirty grey and vaguely familiar. "Have any money?"

"Can you spare a few coins?" another woman comes out of nowhere. "Please, just few coins, I beg of you!"

Suddenly, there is a crowd – it's almost like materialising from nowhere. There are Florentine nobles walking around, muttering, "He must be late – and she must be beautiful!" and there are people in robes and someone is shouting, "I have just what you need!" and on other side he spots a black robed doctor in a bird mask, shouting, "I've traditional remedies, and wisdom of the Arabies!" and "Prices so low you won't believe your eyes!"

Desmond looks over the crowd of people – there's suddenly just a _lot_ of them, as far as the eye can see. Merchants from Venice and roaming freedom fighters from Boston, whole bunch of people from Constantinople and a trail of women carrying Jars obviously from somewhere in Altaïr's time and so on and so on. Just a lot and lot of the background crowds from all the many cities he'd run across and through in the Animus all of them congregating here, in middle of literal nowhere.

The orphans are still tugging at his trousers and at his hoodie and the beggar women from Acre and Damascus and Jerusalem are holding onto his shoulders and making pleading hand gestures at him, begging, "Just a few coins, that's all I ask!"

It's a lot. Lot of noise and lot of people and lot of bits and pieces of dialogue he's heard before. It's all becomes cacophony and in a weird way it sounds actually oddly… nice. It sounds real, like actual regular chatter of a crowd, the tugging and pulling of the beggars aside.

"I'm sorry, I don't have any coins," Desmond says to the beggars, awkward, while the mercenaries at his back bristle.

"Just a few coins, I beg of you!" one of them shouts at him.

"My family is sick and dying," another bemoans.

"I'm poor and sick and hungry!"

"I'm sorry, I don't have anything," Desmond says and looks at them a bit sadly. "You don't really understand at all, do you?"

"No, _you_ don't understand," the woman snaps at him. "I have nothing!"

Desmond winces a little at that – it's familiar dialogue too, but damn, that's eerie. Awkward, he begins untangling himself from their grasping hands, backing away – only to have them wind around him, stopping him at his tracks, tugging even harder.

"Fun, isn't it?"

Desmond glances behind him at the origin of the voice – and there's Clay again, watching him from the side with his arms resting at his hips. "You followed me?"

"Distance is bit relative here," Clay shrugs, looking at the crowd. "They're sort of attracted to things happening – when there's group of people in one place here, more appear around them to form a crowd. It can get a bit hectic."

"Yeah," Desmond says, shrugging off another beggar woman's graphing hands and then easing the orphan boy's hands off his hoodie. "How many are there, do you know?"

"No idea," Clay answers. "Hundreds, thousands, millions. They litter this place like flies on a dung pile – you can kill them, but they don't stay dead for long."

"You've killed them?" Desmond asks dubiously.

"When they get annoying," Clay says and shrugs. "Hey they aren't any more real than I am. They're just code. They don't feel pain."

One of Desmond's mercenaries shoves at a random passerby, who shouts back. "They seem to feel pain just fine to me," Desmond comments.

"Programmed reactions," Clay says. "It's all just code, they're all just programs. You're just wasting your time talking to them, being nice to them. It's not like they actually think or feel anything."

Desmond looks down to one of the beggar boys, who is repeating the _trick_ from before, going rather feebly, "Tadaah!" at the end of it and then holding out his hands, hoping for a reward. "They look real," Desmond says and awkwardly pets the boy's head in lieu of having anything to give. "They sound and feel real."

"Animus is good at that," Clay agrees, frowning at him. "Don't fool yourself thinking they're people, Desmond – you'll just go nuts that way. I should know."

Desmond hums, noncommittal. The boy whose hair he is petting stands frozen under his hand. He doesn't have a preset reaction to being patted it seems and maybe it's confusing the programming. To Desmond it just looks like the kid is surprised, maybe stunned. "Sorry," Desmond says and smiles apologetically. "I don't have any money to give you."

"Tch, and they have literally nothing they could do with it even if they had some," Clay mutters. "It would just disappear into the ether and they'd go back to begging, just like they're programmed to. They can't do anything else – and they don't even beg from each other, just us, the actual people. Relatively-actual-people, in my case."

Desmond shrugs and Clay scowls at him. "Seriously, there is no point being nice to them, you're just being nice to a fucking computer."

"So?" Desmond asks and shrugs. "It doesn't hurt anyone to be nice," he says and then crouches down, to consider the beggar boys at their level. "Hey, you see those guys over there?" Desmond asks them and points to a group of Florentine nobles, walking around not far from them. "I bet they have a whole bunch of coins – why don't you go ask them?"

For a moment the orphan kids sway in confusion and indecision while Clay scoffs – moment later, the boys run off. Desmond looks after them with interest as they surround the nobles, reaching out to them and laughing and playing their tricks. The nobles, it looks like, don't have any idea how to react to it.

Desmond stands up.

"What the hell?" Clay quietly asks, watching them interact – two very different sets of people from two very different time periods.

Desmond shrugs. "I mean, you know… why not?"

Clay eyes him with suspicion, looking at the crowd and then back to Desmond. "Hmm," he says. "Hold that thought," he says then, and suddenly disappears – much like he used to, back in the Black Room, flickering with fractal code as he goes.

Desmond glances after him and then shrugs – then he spots a herald from what looks like Rome, and goes to listen to the man. "Minstrels plying their trade within the city limits are asked to avoid performing the popular play about the little boy of Prussia," the herald announces at the crowd of mostly indifferent passers-by. "It has caused several priests to suffer embarrassing physical juttings – in _public_."

Desmond snorts. That _had_ to be Shaun's inclusion, that one. No way in hell was that an actual herald announcement in Rome of all places. Wonder if there were other hilarious gems of dialogue in there, he muses and then settles down to listen to the random mumblings and shouts coming from the crowd.

For death and supposed hell this isn't so bad, Desmond thinks, as the herald moves on to reporting about Florentine youths mooning a delegation from Pisa.


End file.
